


song of storms

by noahfronsenburg



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Fluff, Homesickness, M/M, May/December Relationship, Nostalgia, i am uncomfortably invested!!!!!!!, no betas we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-02
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-09-05 13:36:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16811677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noahfronsenburg/pseuds/noahfronsenburg
Summary: “Homesick?” Shadowhunter asks at last.





	song of storms

**Author's Note:**

> im starting to feel like this pairing came into my house and ripped my spine out of my back and beat me to death with it.
> 
> also it was really shit weather in chicago today and i was listening to song of storms piano remixes while cooking dinner and it poured outside in the cold and it just Felt Right.

Rain atop the tent wakes him, and Alphinaud lays there, groggy. There’s a rock under him digging into the small of his back beneath the tarp, under where they pitched, and he shifts sideways, trying to roll off of it, grunts again. He tries shutting his eyes to go back to sleep, tempting himself to rest, but there’s no angle where his back doesn’t hurt.

Eventually, he sits up, yawning, and rubs his eyes. He stretches, rubbing at the small of his back, wincing at the bruising. It’s not just from the rock; it’s old soreness, muscle exhaustion from days on the move, from fights he wasn’t ready for, from sleeping on the ground, from poor nutrition. He hangs his head and breathes out a shaking sigh.

He’s tired.

He’s so tired.

A warm hand brushes the base of his back, below his untucked shirt. “Go back to sleep,” Gaius sounds as tired as Alphinaud feels, his hoarse voice even grittier with sleep. Alphinaud hums a noncommittal answer but doesn’t otherwise reply. It’s the first night they’ve not had to split up the watch in almost a week and a half; they’ve found some other resistance fighters, and while the truce is tentative, it’s enough.

He can’t remember the last time he had a full night’s sleep.

Alphinaud ducks his head. “I find I cannot,” he says at last, and the hand flattens, a broad, hot palm pressed against the low part of his back. Without being asked to, Gaius digs his fingertips in, and it takes him all of half a minute to find the bruising. Alphinaud makes a broken noise when he does, and the touch softens, starts to massage. “Thank you,” he whispers, and it is Gaius’ turn to make a noncommittal noise in response.

They lay there together, in the quiet, as Gaius eases the tension out of Alphinaud’s back, listening to the rain overhead. They don’t speak for a time, but neither of them needs to. Alphinaud is not particularly taciturn by nature, and Gaius is only by need, but the silence they are able to carry is reassuring in its own way. Alphinaud sighs, and eventually, he shifts backward to lay down across Gaius’ chest, head on his stomach.

Gaius grunts, but doesn’t make him move. Alphinaud is light enough that he isn’t a problem, at least for now.

The hand that was on his back before returns, but this time, to brush the fine hairs along Alphinaud’s hairline back out of his face, above his ear, behind it. “This reminds me of the Shroud,” Alphinaud says, finally, staring up into the grey cloth of the tent overhead, washing out the sky above them. It’s very dark out here, with no light pollution from cities. And _cold_. He is increasingly glad for the opportunity to share body warmth. “With the water on the foliage overhead. Just laying there, in the silence, and listening. You can feel the forest around you, all alive with aether. The elementals pulse, in the ground, in the sky, in the trees...”

His throat feels tight.

“Homesick?” Gaius asks at last, and Alphinaud closes his eyes. Lets out a slow breath, and does not cry.

He is a grown man. He is Eorzea’s ambassador, going to the heart of Garlemald on only the faintest hope, dream, of peace. He is not the child he was when he came to Eorzea’s shores, years ago now—he will not cry over his missed past. But, at the same time—

“I miss it.” Gaius says.

Alphinaud opens his eyes.

The fingers in his hair have stilled, and he rolls his head to the side to look at the other man. Gaius is leaning back onto his good right arm, and his eyes are far away. He needs to shave, badly, grey stubble turning almost into a beard, and it makes Alphinaud remember just how _old_ he is.

“Eorzea.” Gaius says it like he is tasting the word, every sound in his mouth. “I fell prey to it just as all else have. Been drawn in. Longed for it. I miss walking its lands,” he continues, and there is _wistfulness_ in his voice, an aching, longing nostalgia. “I have been many places in this world, Alphinaud, but nothing will ever compare with the gloom over Mor Dhona, or the tension in the air when Odin roams the Shroud. I do not need to be able to taste the aether as you do to feel it when it fills the air, as oppressive as clouds before a thunderstorm.” He pauses. “I used to sit by Silvertear Lake and simply think.”

“Would you go back?” Alphinaud surprises himself with the question. Although he has grown comfortable with Gaius’ presence, even safe, he knows that there are not many people who Eorzea would more like to see rent limb from limb. But, Nero has managed all right, although he spends most of his time, as far as anyone can tell, either living homeless in the woods or with (?) Cid, so.

“To rule?” Gaius sits up to look down at him, craning his head so that his chin is digging into his neck, and Alphinaud has to resist the urge to roll his eyes. “Twelve forbid, no.”

Alphinaud stares at him, and then bursts into laughter.

Immediately the other man’s expression clouds; his cheeks coloring. He purses his lips, grits his jaw. “What is so damn funny,” he snaps, as Alphinaud rolls backward, pressing his head into Gaius’ stomach, face buried in his hands. “That you and yours have finally beaten that out of me? I would think a man of twenty summers would not be like to laugh at—“

“You—“ Alphinaud tries to speak and loses it again, wheezing and sputtering at the look of consternation on Gaius’ face. “You said—“ and he begins to laugh once again, simply in sheer delight at having, of all people, _Gaius van Baelsar_ look at him like he’s just reinvented the wheel. “Twelve forbid!”

Gaius’ sigh is audible, and he falls back onto their bedroll. After a moment, he too begins to laugh; in his smoke-ruined voice, it is a wheezy, quiet sound, soft and a little broken. It is the first time Alphinaud has heard him laugh, and it makes something tighten in his chest. He sits up, leans over the other man, presses a hand to the center of his chest above the mottling burn scars from his chestplate, and leans down to kiss him, swallowing up Gaius’ laughter like he can catch it, bottle it in his mouth, taste it, hang onto it. Gaius slides a hand into the base of his braid, pulls him closer by it, and Alphinaud leans into the kiss, closes his eyes, loses himself.

Afterward, he pillows his chin on his folded hands atop Gaius’ chest, and settles in, watches his face.

“In the name of the Emperor,” he says, and Gaius raises a single eyebrow at him. “I fear, Legatus, you’ve been abroad from home for too long.”

“Thirty years this coming spring,” Gaius replies, and Alphinaud hesitates, shuts his eyes, and leans more into the man, face pressed to his chest. “I often wonder,” Gaius adds, his voice even softer, “If I _want_ to go back. If I will find aught waiting for me but that which will bring me despair.”

It is not lost on Alphinaud that Gaius is the last of the founding generation to remain. All those he fought beside, those who helped raise Garlemald and give it its might, now lay dead. Gaius is the last of a dying breed, and Alphinaud is not a fool. He knows that he will not live long; that his foolish hope of destroying the Ascians, of rescuing Garlemald from itself, will peter out and die in flames. And take him with them, this time.

But Alphinaud cannot help but hope.

“Someday,” Alphinaud says, his words muffled in his hands, Gaius’ broad palm on the small of his back, fingers once again massaging the sore muscles that plague him there, “Come to Eorzea with me. We can go to the Everschade, and walk the Burning Wall. Climb the Observatorium and watch the stars when the Astrologians do their accounting. Eat at the Culinarian’s Guild; they often run contests where the public judges.”

“I have always wanted to see the Sharlayan settlement north of Ishgard. You were born there, were you not?”

“I was.” Alphinaud pauses. “It is a goblin settlement now. They took it over after it was abandoned. It looks very little like it once did, but it is...certainly an experience.”

“Goblins,” Gaius repeats, his fingers stilling for a moment as he processes the concept. “Goblins?”

“An entire city, run by goblins. Of course,” Alphinaud adds, in his most serious and scholarly of voices, “The Illuminati did summon a primal from the past and we did have to kick them out forcibly before they would give up their claim, as is my understanding, because of something about a cheese theft, but it is all quite calm and regular now.”

Gaius is very quiet. He is so quiet that his thinking is very nearly audible. Alphinaud hides his smile by pressing his face into his hands and pretends he isn’t shaking with repressed laughter. Even by Eorzean standards, the events surrounding the summoning of Alexander are...somewhat absurd. It is why he so dearly relishes relating them to those who did not have to live them.

It never fails to be amusing.

“You,” Gaius says at last, “Lead a very eventful life, my boy.” Left unspoken is the fact that if _Gaius_ of all people finds himself forced to comment upon it, it must be very eventful indeed.

“Eorzea rather does that,” Alphinaud agrees. “Someday, we can listen to the rain in the Shroud together.”

They are silent, then. Eventually, when Alphinaud is so nearly asleep that he almost misses it, Gaius whispers into his hair:

“I would enjoy that.”

**Author's Note:**

> twitter/tumblr @jonphaedrus


End file.
